By ErinBrock
One thing we see over and over from the fallout of a sociopathic relationship is destroyed self-esteem and a lack of confidence. Lacking self-esteem and confidence leads to overlooking behaviors and having a hard time making firm decisions for ourselves.
Destroyed self-esteem makes it difficult some days to even get out of bed, let alone get out of the house and participate in life. It’s hard to plan for meals, school lunches, kid activities, legal angles, financial support and moving forward. We want to hide under the covers and make it all go away.
Okay yes, and justifiably so. BUT ”¦ if we want to get “somewhere,” we must first find our adamant.
Adamant describes a beautiful diamond—very hard, crystalline carbon, impenetrable, impregnable, unshakeable and unyielding. It is a valuable gem.
We must learn to find the gem we all possess ”¦”¦ our valuable adamant.
We must commit to being adamant and NOT allowing destruction. We must be adamant about taking back our souls from a sociopath, protecting our children, our assets and our futures. Right is right and wrong is wrong. We must be adamant about this!
We all possess adamant; we were gifted this beautiful gem at birth. We put it away for the sociopath. Dig it out and reconnect; keep it close and feel it!
Once we find our adamant, we can move forward with a dedicated, “hell hath no fury” attitude. We discover things inside of ourselves we never thought we were capable of. We learn how much power we have over our lives and how much we can change things we don’t like or agree with.
WHY? Because we are adamant!
Adamant is an important and powerful feeling. It’s the empowerment we need to proceed into a custody battle, a divorce with a sociopath, or a family member’s betrayal.
There is no other word that has the same feeling or empowerment attached as adamant.
I asked my kids about what they knew about the word adamant. They responded, “when Moms adamant, don’t try to change her mind, it will never work.”
This led into a great, humor-filled chat. Jr. asked to borrow my car for a long distance drive. He stated his reasons. I said, “I’m sorry, but no.”
He persisted. I looked at him and said, “Jr. ”¦ I’m adamant ”¦ NO!”
He said, “Mom, I’m adamant. I need your car.”
I then explained to Jr. adamant is NOT the same as pushy, persistent, manipulative or convincing. Adamant means there are NO negotiations involved. The buck stops with adamant. Done. Period!
Jr. smiled and went on his way; he understood there was nowhere left to go, mom was adamant.
Once we find our adamant and team it up with tenacity, strength and courage ”¦”¦ we become a strong force. We can pull on our adamant and make strong dedicated decisions, and move forward with confidence.
Adamant is personal, spiritual, professional and human. Adamant encompasses our whole being, once we find it.
Once we find our adamant, we are no longer the victim and we become the survivor, the gems we always were ”¦ finally unearthed and empowered, impenetrable and unshakeable!
Holly:
Welcome to LF…..and finding your adamant!
If your married or have any legal ties to your spath…..make sure you take it ALL with you…..all documentation of your financial life…..duplicate keys to assets, birth certs for kids, passports……LEAVE NOTHING!
If you’ve been reading…..you ‘get it’. Keep your adamant close and don’t waver when the shiat starts getting thick and the i love you’s start thicker……
You KNOW the truth.
Keep yourself safe darlen……and congratulations on your decision to take back your life.
XXOO
EB
Whyme:
I had the need to dig also…….and shiat…..what we find!
Don’t discount any of it…..and Don’t throw it out ……keep it for divorce.
The ‘secrets’ you uncover are the true him……in all his glory…..
BE MAD, stay mad and build on those emotions for your own healing.
You sound WONDERFUL!!!!!!
Dear Whyme,
You have been taken for a ride! They are GOOD at what they do. They make us think they love us, and then they pull the rug out from under us just when we think we are standing firm.
They hold on to us by holding out a “carrot” like a carrot in front of a donkey, and if we don’t reach for the carrot they whomp us on the arse with the stick—give and withhold “love,” but the truth is we will never get the carrot because it is PLASTIC but the STICK is steel! They hold out the HOPE of something wonderful, but it is all a fake!
When we realize finally what has been going on, the betrayal is bad, but GET MAD and KICK THE CARP OUT OF HIM EMOTIONALLY. It will cleanse your heart! Get mad and then get GLAD, glad that the pervert is GONE!!!! You are free!
taking a bit of a break. i have been methodically going through email and IP address souce headers for the last 2 hours. Sitting quietly, not panicking, picking through it.
i have five piles of papers ready for the lawyer. I need to print about 15 more documents, decide on what to put on the CD, and write a cover letter.
I can say, ‘slow, but sure’ now.
I watched a video last night http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/The_Nature_of_Things/ID=1605117929 called ‘Changing your Mind’ about brain plasticity and how the new knowledge about our brains is being used to treat different ‘mind illnesses’, including PTSD – the section about PTSD starts at the 2nd mark (of 4 on the play bar of the video)
They are doing something that i have been intuitively doing during nuerofeedback – going over the things about the spath con that trigger me. After seeing this vid, i did it more deliberately during nuerofeedback today. And here i sit, 2 hours of spath shit and barely phased.
I think I will look into this treatment on the video a bit more. See if it is something for me.
PTSD makes everything shit. and makes dealing with the spath crap REALLY hard. We need to get treatment. We need our minds to be functioning properly to get off the cliffs.
EB – one step is here. arrived. adamant. much much more to do to keep going.
the outing has been interesting – many people are obviously still under her thrall (i would be the ‘stalker’ snort…), some have challenged me, some are shaken. I plow on. Trying to take care with myself – but i seem to be gaining steam, and not losing it. I feel scrappy. and safer. Well, those two things are always twinned for me.
kisses miss big bouncy hair. nice article. shine on.
Hey, Holly, Hi!
Welcome to the sanctuary of LF. You’ll find all the support & wisdom you need here to successfully escape the web of your SP. Come on with your adamant move to freedom!
Oxy & EB,
thanks a trillion for the props, ladies! It feels really GOOD to have that encouragement now….instead of just trying to believe that I might someday get past this 8yrs of being hoodwinked & bound to an illusion. I just couldn’t believe it—-how could he have possibly faked love for that long? & how do I know that he’s an SP, & not just a conflicted man in love with 2 women? Well, Thank You, God, for pointing to that red bag, because now I have all the proof I need….exactly what I desperately need to know so I could move on with my life & HEAL!
Yeaaaaa for us ADAMANT SP Survivers!
I’m at one full month of No Contact today!! Yay!!!
It is amazing how much my head has cleared by being away from his evil influence. I have started to understand the magnitude of what he did to me and to our family. It was a desperate leap of faith telling someone about the way he was abusing me, but I did it. It was either tell someone and get help to get him away from me, or die.
I told my husband, who turned out to be the most supportive and understanding person I could have imagined. He knew something was going on of course, but just didn’t know what was wrong. I had supposed he would be sickened by me and blame me, who knows what, but instead he has helped me understand that it wasn’t my fault that I was being abused. Well, of course it wasn’t, I see that now. I still have self-blame and guilt and all that psychological stuff from surviving it, but I am working through it and doing pretty good.
The spath had so twisted my thinking and my sense of right-and-wrong, and my view of myself, and everything else, I didn’t know what to think anymore. Craziness! I haven’t posted much (although I read a lot), but I know my previous posts were full of confusion. It has taken this month of MY OWN THINKING with no input or explanations or manipulations from him, just to begin to sort it out.
Getting a restraining order against him has enforced the No Contact. Telling others about the situation keeps me from being tempted to renew contact (hoping for an apology, or some other false hope). And the spath will not contact me now because he would go to jail for it, and he’s a coward anyway.
Holly, hello, good luck with your escape from the nightmare. If you are like me you will start to see things so much more clearly as time passes without him. Hang on and don’t have anything at all to do with him. Getting back your own thoughts is precious and truly life-saving!!
Dear Justdreamin,
CONGRATULATIONS!!!! and TOWANDA for you!!!! You go gurl!!!!
It is amazing just how much light the CRACKS let in!!!! It lets us see what is going on and the truth!!!!
Can’t remember who first said it, but it has been quoted on LF many times, “The truth will set you free, but first it will pith you off!”
I am SOOOOOO happy for you!!!!! Congratulations again, and keep on reading, learning and healing!
ps good move getting the restraining order!!!!
Dear “One”,{I like that, dear one!!}
Thanks for the feed back on this U tube video, havent watch a ll of it yet, but I will, many thanks for your thoughtfulness!
I wrote to Sky, I hope she “gets’ that Im on HER side, just trying to get my head around why she still hangs around spaths. Anyway, HER business, as you said.
We will NEVER get closure from these sick creatures, and in my opinion we have to make our own closure, and total NC is the only way forward for most of us.Its been 1 year and 4 months total NC from spath D. no. 1, and the other one I havent seen anyway in 17 years, Ive been reading about”splitting”-what she did to me, which is another way they have of torturing us,{if we let them!} I never thought Id ever get over not being “allowed” to see 3 of my GKids, -hey,Im more sanguine about it now, as if I had seen them, it would be easier for spath D2 to torture me by withholding them from me.Using them as pawns in her sicko games.All about control, they have to have it, they think.
So, Im learning to spin gold out of straw, like Rumplestiltskin!!Its all about accepting the things I cannot change, and courage to change the things I can.
Im also starting to see how Ive been depriving my nice, kind patient Husband for years,{not deliberately of course,} but by going on about my girls the way I have been. I dont do this as much now that I have lovefraud to share and vent in,,so hes benefitting.He told me yesterday that hes known for YEARS and years what biatches they both were, and saw that I didnt GET it, that I tried so hard to keep giving and loving them,to try to uncover the “nice” part of them.Richard Skerritt mentions this in his book “Tears and Healing,” in a chapter called “Onions and scrambled eggs”. For years, he put up with unbelievable abuse,{physical, emotional and mental} from his ex wife, thinking that if he just loved her enough, the diamond in the heart of the “Onion ” would be revealed. Till he found out there was NO diamond, only a sick scrambled mind,-{the “scrambled eggs”in the book.}
Were all getting there, as Oxy says, its a lifelong journey of healing from these sicko creatures. The PTSD Ive discovered is very real, and the reason it came out so violently recently is that Ive put a lid on it for so long, nearly 30 years.Like a pressure cooker, I finally blew my top! And YES!!!EB is right!!Anger has its place.Anger turned inwards inside of us leads to deep depression, self hate, self blame, lack of confidence, on and on.EB you ROCKK!!Girl! You found your ADAMANT and you are helping us to find ours!TOWANDA FOR US ALL!!!Love, MamaGemXXX Were on our way, and were doin OK!!PS I think fat is a sort of safety net for some of us, a protection from the world, a buffer between us and the “bad people’in it.I find now that Im getting my anger out in a healthier way, Im getting thinner, almost without trying,plus I have way more energy and confidence, and it shows!I have to trust the process, its working!
Hey Guys, didnt I do WELL choosing my LF blog name!
Gem, my inner Adamant! She was there all along!
Love,Gem.XX
Hi, Oxy, Darlen! That was Leonard Cohen who sang that in his album,”Anthem”.In that wonderful deep, gravelly voice of his.
“There is a crack where the light gets in”.
Ie, Our broken hearts are cracked wide open, and THATS when the light shines in, then we reflect it back OUT!
BTW I met him YEARS ago{around1970} in a Buddhist retreat in Scotland called Samye Ling. I went there for a long weekend,in search for “enlightenment” Met this guy in the Library there, I said,”You look like Leonard Cohem the singer! has anyone told you? he said,
“I AM Leonard Cohen!”
True story!Love, Mama gem.XX